


Singularly Unobservant

by Isis



Category: Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Placidus observes an intimate moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singularly Unobservant

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt at the_eagle_kink: _Placidus sees Marcus and Esca fucking. Obviously, he just can't look away._
> 
> First posted unbeta'ed on the kinkmeme. Then I was looking something up in the text and found that Aquila's house is well described, and looked nothing like what I had described, so I rewrote quite a bit. However, in the text Marcus does actually close the door. Alas, for my purposes, he must leave it slightly ajar, so consider this infinitesimally AU. 
> 
> Thanks to Luzula and Sineala for beta comments.
> 
> The first paragraph is verbatim from the text.

_Before Marcus could answer, a low chuckle came from the Legate, whose back was toward them. "For one who considers himself—I believe not without the right—a somewhat skilled hunter, you can be singularly unobservant of small things, my Placidus."_

The Tribune Servius Placidus wakes in the night. He does not sleep well in unfamiliar places – such as this house, the villa of an old friend of the Legate he serves – and in any event he went to bed early. The Legate Hieronimianus and his old friend stayed up talking with each other, and he did not care to sit and listen to the dull reminiscences of two old men. 

He could have spent the evening with Marcus Flavius, the younger Aquila, but after their stilted conversation that afternoon it was clear they have nothing in common. The adventure that Marcus has planned sounds marvelous: going after Rome's lost Eagle, by Bacchus! What an audacious idea! But apparently he would rather have his slave by his side than a Tribune of Rome, and anyway, Placidus is being posted home, finally, and he is not going to stay in this benighted province a moment longer than he has to, even for an adventure like that one.

So Placidus left the atrium early, and slept for an hour or two. But now he is awake, and he is bored. Enough light seeps in from the corridor lamp that he can find his tunic; he dresses quietly, so as not to wake his slave who lies on a pallet by the wall. Then he pushes the door open, steals out, and pads silently down the colonnade.

Aquila the Elder's villa is built in the Roman manner, with rooms arrayed around three sides of a courtyard. Between the moonlight and the few lamps left burning while the slaves finish their daily labors, there is enough light to see. Aquila and the Legate have gone to bed; a servant crosses between two tall stone flower-jars and enters the atrium, and Placidus is alone in the courtyard.

And then he hears his name.

"It is perhaps not only I who think foolish thoughts because of the Tribune Placidus."

The voice is that of the slave, the one who is to accompany Marcus Flavius Aquila on his bold and ridiculous mission to recover Rome's lost Eagle. His voice is low and quiet, but one is always alert to the sound of one's own name. And so Placidus stands there in the colonnade near the sleeping-cell they must be in, Marcus and his slave, and listens.

Marcus Flavius replies to the slave, saying he should not have asked him to come, and Placidus certainly agrees with that. The idea of having one's life dependent on a barbarian slave's whim! But then he continues: "No one should ask a slave to go with him on such a hunting trail; but – he might ask a friend."

A friend! Placidus cannot believe what he is hearing. He had laughed and told Marcus that if he trusted that slave of his so much, that maybe he should free him – could it be that Marcus took those words to heart? 

Carefully, quietly, he steps closer. He is good at moving silently, as this is an essential skill for a hunter, and yes, the Legate is right, he is proud of his abilities in this regard. The courtyard is mostly dark, but in the room a lamp is lit, and the door stands ajar a bit to catch the pleasant air of spring, so he can see them, a little, through the gap between door and door-frame. Marcus stands next to the small cot; the slave sits on it, holding a scroll, and as Placidus watches he drops the scroll to the side and seizes Marcus's hands.

Then he speaks, but not in Latin, and so Placidus, who has never bothered to learn more of the local language than he needs to coax pretty British girls into his bed, is not quite sure what he is saying. But he recognizes the word he knows means _Centurion_ , and the word _slave_. He definitely hears the name Marcus – the audacity of the man, to use his master's praenomen! The Briton says – he is pretty sure this is what he is saying – that he has not served Marcus as a slave. That is silly, Placidus thinks. How, then, has he served?

The slave draws Marcus's hands to his lips and kisses them, then places them on his own shoulders and reaches for the hem of Marcus's tunic, and oh, yes, _that_ is how he has served: as a slave after all. A bed-slave. But Marcus pushes his hands away and says something sharp in the British tongue.

The slave rises to his feet and reclaims Marcus's hands, says something that sounds equally as sharp. His words are low and urgent. Then he switches back to Latin: "Did you not just give me this scroll that says I am free?"

So Marcus _did_ free him, thinks Placidus. Now he will see what his slave truly thinks.

"You don't owe me anything, Esca. As I said, it is for you to go or to stay."

"It is that I wish to stay. And that I wish to do what I have long wanted. What you have wanted as well." Esca's hands slide along Marcus's arms to his shoulders. They look strong, those hands, strong and solid, but the touch is clearly gentle, and watching this makes something clench in Placidus's heart.

"I could not ask that of you while you could not refuse," says Marcus softly. His head is bowed; he is not looking at the slave – at the former slave, rather. At Esca.

"So I can refuse now. But it is not in my heart to refuse. Besides, you are not asking. I am giving." One of his hands drops to the front of Marcus's tunic and shapes around what he finds there. 

Marcus inhales sharply, and Placidus finds himself doing the same. It's not that he finds Esca particularly attractive – or that he finds Marcus attractive, for that matter. He likes women, with their soft breasts and rounded buttocks; and he likes the way they smell, like flowers and the sea-shore. If there are no girls around, boys will do, but he prefers them much younger. Men are too hard-edged for his taste, and both Marcus and Esca are men, not boys. But still, there is something irresistible, something compelling, in the scene he is witnessing through the gap between door and door-frame. It is not just what they are doing; it is the joy they take in it, in who they are and what they are to each other.

He can't see much, just a sliver of their bodies, but his imagination fills in the rest. He shouldn't be watching. He knows this. He shouldn't be hard, either, but he is. And so he stands in the corridor, transfixed, as Esca sits on the edge of the cot again. He pushes Marcus's tunic up with one hand and Placidus gets a glimpse of the hard, straight line of flesh before Esca's other hand curls around it.

Marcus gasps. Then Esca bends his head forward and takes him into his mouth.

"You…oh…"

Placidus cannot actually see much: he sees part of Esca's face in profile, sees his hand and mouth and the folds of Marcus's tunic draped against his forehead. He sees Marcus's head thrown back, his arm across the gap through which Placidus spies, and so imagines his hand is on Esca's shoulder, or perhaps on the back of his head, holding him in place. He hears the soft noises of lips and tongue, and quiet moans, and his own blood pounding through his veins like the wild beat of native drums. He reaches under his own tunic and strokes himself, very lightly.

"Esca, you mustn't…you shouldn't…oh, that is so good, Esca, by all that is…oh!"

The bit of Marcus's face he can see is contorted in pleasure. It's really quite ugly, Placidus thinks. How can that slave, that Esca – but there he is, rising, wiping his mouth, and pressing his body against that of Marcus, and Roma Dea, but Placidus is as hard as a stone, watching this. He grips himself a little more firmly.

"I cannot," whispers Marcus. His head is bent against Esca's neck, on his shoulder, and his words are barely audible. But his hand moves under Esca's tunic and Placidus can see Esca writhing against that hand, and his own hand moves a bit faster. He bites his lip so as to keep from making a noise. 

"Oh!" says Esca, and then he lets loose a string of curses, or praise, or something, Placidus has no idea what he's saying in that barbaric language of his, but it must be something passionate and heartfelt, for his eyes are closed and he is rocking into Marcus's hand, rocking into his body, rocking faster and faster until he gasps and sighs and slumps against Marcus with one last groan.

Placidus leans back against the wall and finishes himself as well with silent efficiency. He wipes his hand at the bottom of his tunic. The slave will clean it; he has another for tomorrow's journey, anyway. 

The two of them fall back onto the cot, which also groans a little with their weight, and he can not longer see anything other than a bit of Marcus's back, and his feet sticking out behind him. They are speaking to each other in quiet British syllables, but Placidus does not need to understand their words to know what they are saying. The affection in the tone of their voices is clear.

It is not the loyalty of a slave that Marcus will be dependent upon. It is the love of a friend.

How had he failed to notice the currents between these two? The answer comes to him immediately: it is because Esca was a slave, and Placidus pays no attention to slaves. They are just there, like the furniture. But it's obvious to him now that Marcus has paid attention to his painted barbarian for a very long time. The affection and desire between the two of them clearly has not sprung up overnight, but has built slowly over the years, like a stream which begins as a small rivulet in the mountains, then gathers other tiny streams as it descends, until it becomes a great river that has no choice but to empty itself into the sea.

And as strange and personally distasteful as it may be to Placidus himself to see Marcus – a Roman citizen! – in loving embrace with the barbarian who has been his slave, he is also, he must admit, deeply envious. For they are going north together, not as a soldier and his slave but together, truly together, on a mission which will win them both glory if they succeed. It is something he can't even contemplate. Of course the girls here have just been soft, warm bodies to divert himself with; he supposes when they return to Rome, not so very far off now, his parents will have selected a girl of good family for him to wed. He has prospects; he has his life mapped out for him, a life of politics and influence, and that will most certainly include the proper wife.

But a wife – a proper wife – is not someone you go haring off with after an adventure. She keeps the home and gives you children; that is what a wife is for. And even if he is lucky enough to marry a woman as fiery as a British girl, as hot and sweet as one particular girl he is still a little sad to have left behind in Eburacum, he will not be having any adventures with her save those they have in their marital bed.

He will not be having any adventures at all, if he is honest with himself. Maybe boar-hunting in Etruria with a pack of other patricians; that will be all the adventure he will get. He will become a quaestor when he has finished his military service, and eventually a praetor, and then, he hopes, a consul. These are all positions of weight and honor, but they allow little scope for adventure. But this is the path he has been set upon, and that is – 

A movement in the room startles him out of his thoughts. He hears footsteps, oh, please let them not be coming out here, there is nowhere to hide –

The lamp is snuffed. They don't come out, and their quiet murmurs have ceased as well. All is dark and silent within the room. Marcus must have gone back to his bed, and perhaps Esca went with him.

And so Placidus, too, goes back to his own bed; back to his empty bed, alone.


End file.
